


Rocinante

by cognomen



Series: The Man of La Mancha [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Implied Character Death, M/M, spoilers for Prisoners Dillema
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 12:22:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/638865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"How's your Cervantes?" The detective prompts, setting a white styrofoam container at Donnelly's elbow like a casual bribe, forcing him to look up and up along the man's arm to find his face, and Donnelly's back crunches threateningly in protest when he tries to straighten it.</p><p>Written for the prompt: Szymanski is literally the only human being in the entire show who Donnelly could have trusted to help him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [livenudebigfoot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/livenudebigfoot/gifts).



**The First Sally**

"How's your Cervantes?" The detective prompts, setting a white styrofoam container at Donnelly's elbow like a casual bribe, forcing him to look up and up along the man's arm to find his face, and Donnelly's back crunches threateningly in protest when he tries to straighten it.

"Miserable," he answers, because it is. 

He's seen this detective around - paid attention a few times, too. He's a sad old bachelor but he's got eyes in his head, anyway. He'd learned the detective's name, too, but his mind churns up an unhelpful blank and the vague notion that there's a 'z' in it somewhere. "But I remember the gist. You think I'm tilting at windmills, detective?"

"I just think that what you're chasing and what you might catch don't line up quite the way you're convinced, maybe," the detective temporizes - philosophizes, perhaps. "And you've hardly moved for six hours."

Donnelly thinks it can't be that long, surely, but the food smell coming from the box the detective set down makes him feel shaky and wavering, like he's had nothing but coffee all day, and he checks his watch, glances at the frigid dregs in his cup and realizes he hasn't.

"Time gets away, huh?" Detective -William something, Donnelly remembers quickly when the detective slides a smile his way in the same way he'd delivered the food, easy like he'd been asked to do it, and there's no 'Z' in William. Bill.

Donnelly reaches out to claim the food, because he hasn't come up with any kind of voiceable defense for sitting here immobile with his own thoughts. "It does," he concedes, but he doesn't let the conversation evade his line of thought. "You sound like you know something, detective."

He doesn't mean it to sound accusing, but his thoughts are still unwinding, still trying to cease chasing themselves in circles, and his voice is used to that tone, when he speaks to cops. The Detective - Bill - doesn't take any offense, he just pulls one of the plastic chairs people wait in over from the wall of the precinct and tucks himself down on the other side of the unoccupied desk Donnelly has acquired for himself. 

"Detective Szymanski," Bill reminds him, when Donnelly doesn't append a name, but he smiles like he doesn't really mind being forgotten - and Donnelly can't really blame him for that opinion. He's never minded, not too much, having to be the guy checking over everyone's shoulder. Since the HR bust, he's been largely ignored and that suits him fine - he likes sitting in the precinct and letting it move around him, he likes the background noise. 

Donnelly opens the box and considers the contents, after pushing his papers aside. He knows what they say well enough that he hardly needs them anymore, a number of dossiers of ex-military men at large, a pool of theories and none of them fitting snugly enough that he likes any of them. He breaks the chopsticks apart, meditatively, and then he offers his hand. Szymanski was a clean cop, and Donnelly had seen him chained to a desk, seen his stiff movements. If he had been curious, he could have dug deeper into the injury - but he knew it had been in the line of duty. 

The welcome back party had happened in Donnelly's peripheral vision while he'd dragged names out of coincidences, out of dirty cops, while he'd traced back along the spider's web. He still isn't sure the spider came in, but he's patient - and he has an excuse to be here and keep his eyes open, while the man in the suit wanders the city.

"Alright, Detective Szymanski," he says, when the food has passed his test -pretty good actually, he concedes, and Bill had taken liberties with the other half of his desk to settle his own container of food, the contents of which looked identical. "What do you know about the man in the suit?"

"I know that's Joss' case," Szymanski says, after chewing and swallowing - but there's more answer than that, there's something in the man's eyes besides friendliness, besides what Donnelly insists to himself is casual interest. It's gone by the time the detective finishes, "You should ask her about it."

"Joss?" Donnelly knows who it is, he's just surprised to not hear it as 'Detective Carter'. 

Szymanski gives him a look, eyebrows raised, that suggests he should try first names sometime and see where it got him, and refuses to be sidetracked. "I thought you should come up to the surface and get some air," Szymanski insists when Donnelly is about to press him harder. "It's not good for you to be in your head for so long on something like this - not productive, I mean."

"Hmm." Donnelly lets the silence go for a long minute, seeing how it feels. "So you're here to distract me."

Szymanski falters, and that puts Donnelly off his guard a little - it's more genuine that he'd be put off by Donnelly's faint hostility. Maybe this doesn't have an ulterior motive after all.

"I'm not sure I'd put it that way," Bill rallies, after a moment. "But I'm not sure exactly how I would. It's just - you were stuck."

"I was stuck," Donnelly admits, "I am stuck. Carter's a good detective, I'm not going to solve something she's been on this long in a week. There are a lot of holes. More every day." 

"Put it down for a little while. Do something else." Szymanski suggests. "You've been there all day - what are you putting off?"

Donnelly's been out of the game a long time, so it takes him a minute, maybe two while he makes an excuse of eating. He recognizes that Szymanski is fishing for information. It's not as clumsy as it could be and Donnelly levels a serious look at him while he chews, while he holds his chopsticks halfway over his food like it might disappear out from under them as quickly as it had been delivered unasked. He tries to put together the puzzle carefully. He thinks he knows what the picture is going to look like, but he doesn't want to get ahead of himself or guess wrong and wind up with a horse's ass.

Szymanski looks vaguely uncomfortable after a moment, and Donnelly realizes his expression is probably somewhere between intense and baleful. He swallows. "I have other cases I could work on," he treads the middle ground. 

Szymanski's expression changes and he shakes his head - not what he'd meant.

"I meant home - maybe spend some time with friends?"

Pushing his fried rice from one styrofoam partition to another, Donnelly wonders exactly what he's been looking like sitting here all day to merit this sort of - intervention. 

"Home's Cambridge," Donnelly says, not sure that's really true. He rarely sees the inside of his apartment, and at least this last year has been mostly in and out of different extended stay hotel suites. He doesn't really know why he tells Szymanski that, except partially that he doesn't want to give the detective any impression that he's any more pathetic than he apparently appears to be, and he's grateful for the food. If he's honest with himself, he's grateful for the attention, too.

"Really huh? I had some relatives in Boston as a kid, I used to visit every summer." Szymanski lobbies the conversation back toward Donnelly and just like that - without any awkward 'so no friends in the area?' sort of questions - they're talking.

Well, mostly Szymanski is talking. Donnelly mostly eats, listens, and leads him on, trying not to sound like he's interrogating the man. 

"More for a kid to do in New York," he manages to slide in edgewise, but he's hungrier than he thought now that he has the idea, "I didn't grow up there, though, I lived in Virginia until I graduated."

"I was kind of a boring kid. We'd see the Sox almost every weekend, but otherwise I read a lot."

Over the course of an hour, well after the excuse of food is gone - Donnelly had eaten everything he could coax out of the container with chopsticks and given up on the crumbs, Szymanski's leftovers are packed with the chopsticks sticking halfway out of the container diagonally - they've both leaned back in their chairs and started making genuine eye contact.

He catches Szymanski's attention sliding toward his hands occasionally, and in particular the left. Almost amateur, looking for a ring like that - it was an easy $50 lie, but not one Donnelly bothered to tell. He rarely got to know anyone well enough that they'd bother asking. 

Szymanski isn't wearing one either.

He learns that Szymanski - Bill, after an insistence and he'd traded his own first name - is, by his own definition, a literature nerd. That he has a cat - an orange one by the clinging fur, now that Donnelly looks for it. He learns - or really guesses - that Szymanski is interested, and honestly he's not sure quite how he feels about that. 

He's still trying to figure it out when Bill collects his food and Donnelly's trash, apparently satisfied that Donnelly isn't about to rocket off the deep end from overexposure to frustration. He almost regrets not at least pretending to be more interesting, certain he's managed to kill any chances he might have had.

"Hey," Bill says, pausing at Donnelly's shoulder so that he has to tilt himself almost out of his chair to look up and make eye contact. "Have you read 'Dry'?" 

It seems like a strange question, and Donnelly just shakes his head. It makes sense when a couple of days later the book is on his desk, square on top of his notes.

-

**The Second Sally**

He could be twenty years younger when they hit the wall in the narrow hallway that Szymanski's front door opens into - he has one of those 'barely an apartment' sized places that are becoming the norm in NYC, only bigger than Donnelly's hotel room by a narrow kitchen and a nook off the other end of his bedroom that functioned as a living room if you didn't mind sitting about 3 feet from the wall-mounted TV on the love seat and setting your beer on the windowsill. 

Donnelly didn't. 

It was functional, cleaner than he managed to keep his hotel room between trips to the Laundromat and shoving all the remains of several new York based periodicals into trash bags for disposal, and it was as welcoming as Bill himself. The bedroom was awash with books in meticulous stacks where they didn't fit the shelves. 

They haven't even made it that far today. Donnelly is tight in the grip of anger, of close-pressed frustration - it's nearly four a.m. and he's been out all night to come back in exhausted and empty handed. His jaw is so tight that his teeth are sore, that a headache is clawing at his temples and he can barely wrench his lips apart when Bill is licking at them. He hasn't even said anything, hasn't needed to. 

It snaps him out of it when he pushes his fisted hands harder into Bills chest and the other man gasps against his mouth in old, understated pain. Donnelly knows the wound by now, knows the dimensions and that Elias' name is on it, and that's a small consolation that at least Elias is put away now, even if he's left behind his most dangerous weapons. He knows that might not mean he can't still pull triggers, and that's where the main of his frustration spouts forth.  
He pulls his hands away from Szymanski's chest apologetically, and Bill's hands catch his wrists before he can draw all the way back.

"You didn't come over and wake me up at four to get cold feet," Bill suggests, to show he isn't so delicate as all that, and Donnelly admires his tolerance, reminds himself to be more careful,and Bill yanks his shirt for that because he doesn't - and he's made this as clear as day - like to be treated like glass. Donnelly sighs it out, shifts his feet and twists his shoulders because his back is tense and tight, and Bill pushes his suit jacket off of him, and kicks it aside.

"Let it out," Szymanski says, like a challenge, like a dare, and he's leading but he's goading at the same time, sliding his back along the wall while his square nails dig into the undersides of Donnelly's biceps and drag him along until they hit the open doorway into the bedroom and he jars his shoulder and they're both stumbling for balance.

It's that moment when his momentum has turned into something he can't stop, a free fall, Donnelly lets go, wrenches his teeth apart and sinks them into Bill's shoulder while Bill's nails bite deeper into his arms and they hit the floor - the throw rug by the side of the bed to save feet from the cold wooden floor first thing in the morning - and don't bother getting up.

It's messy, furious, and Bill's chest is hitching in gasps under Donnelly when they settle at last, tearing at buttons and zippers and not bothering to get more undressed than they have to, because this is about almost anything but real intimacy, and while normally Donnelly dislikes being used to prove a point (i can take it, i can take it) right now he needs to prove one just as badly (i can give it).

He breaks with a hiss when they slide together - Bill is only wearing pajama bottoms, he doesn't even have to hitch them very far down past his hips, but his own had seemed like a mess of catches and belt and two sets of hands working against each other when they'd both started trying to get them open, but they do, and Donnelly closes his eyes and braces his hands on the floor just to hold himself up and to keep them out of the way when Bill curls his fingers around both of them too tight for anything like teasing.

It's dry and the friction is almost too much, but his blood is in his veins like pins and fire, he's sweating between his shoulder blades, and his mouth is full of the ghosts of all the cups of coffee he'd had today, all the cigarettes like he could smoke the agitation out, and it had worked enough to keep him cool, to keep him from fluctuating, to keep him even-keel until he could get here and scour it out. Bill rolls his hips up, and he rocks down into the motion and the tight grip and something in him gives way, crashes apart and he can breathe again, pulling air into his sore lungs in fast, unmeasured gasps that he hangs onto until they fill completely before he lets them out again.

Bill curls his free hand around the back of Donnelly's neck and holds on, presses their foreheads together and digs his nails into the base of Nick's skull and pulls his hair and they just move, connected in two places and pushing relentless, fast, until it gets slicker with precum, and it's almost imperceptible when it changes from a wrenching forward sensation to there and over because Donnelly feels like he's been coming this whole time. He sags, they both sag into each other.  
His knees protest the floor, his back protests the tension and the stretch of the position, and his mind protests against the notion of sinking all of his weight onto Bill's chest, but he gives himself two minutes where he doesn't have to care, and Szymanski scratches trails against his scalp absently and catches his breath.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Pastoral Wanderings**

It happens somewhere that Donnelly hasn't been back to his hotel room in a week and change. He crashes on Szymanski's couch while they try to watch a movie - he isn't sure where he'd turned into the sort to let this thing go on in the undefined way it seemed to want to without having to nail it down with some kind of label. He falls asleep in bed with the cat on his chest and refusing to move while trying to wait for Bill to get off the night shift and trying to keep his focus on the blurring lines of newspaper text columns, his mind awash in agonizing blankness that suggests he's missed something crucial.

It will turn up if he just goes back over it, the pattern will emerge.

And then he stays because it's just easier, because Bill will tug the papers out of his hands and push hot coffee into them wordlessly, and look at him until he remembers that there's more of life than work, even if that's been Donnelly's habit since he'd first fallen out of Quantico and headlong into a career, pushing everything else aside until - he told himself - he had success.

He'd just kept re-quantifying success. 

It's one of these nights, when he's still sitting up on the couch trying to badger faster results out of the database technicians in the Federal Plaza building and Bill gets home from graveyard, and gives him a look as he comes in and realizes that Donnelly hasn't risen early (probably from the deepening of the circles under his eyes) but has burned right on through the night, and his shoulders actually droop lower.

Bill sits on his legs where they're stretched out to take up the whole love seat, and waits for him to get off the phone, just watching him. He looks tired, looks like - looks like a mirror to Donnelly's own hangdog moments of downtime that Donnelly just hangs up the phone after letting his sentence hang incomplete.

"You'll never let it go?"

"Someone has to catch-"

Szymanski shakes his head sharply. "Joss has gone round in circles with this guy from day one. Don't you think there's a reason?"

Donnelly tries to guess at what he means (and he knows later, he remembers the words later) but he's so tired now that he's trying to reverse the tracks of his momentum that his thoughts trail after Bill's words into useless nothings. 

"He's got a lot of money rolling behind him, a lot of power," Donnelly says. "I just can't figure out why."

"I'm seeing the paperwork go across my desk, Nick," Bill says, and maybe he sounds a little bitter, a little harder on the word 'desk', "It could be any one of those guys. It could be all of them, running you around in a circle."

"I'm running them right back," Donnelly manages, and he is, he's going to get that one step ahead, finally, that he actually needs. 

Bill stares at him for a moment in silence, and then drops four words into the silence. "I saw him once." 

Donnelly had almost forgotten his suspicions from weeks ago, when they'd both sat at his desk and traded casual flirtation in a stunted half-grown way, when he'd seen the quiet shadow pass over Szymanski's features.

"He's just a man," Bill says at length, and then gets up while Donnelly tries to sort the jumble of words in his brain into a series of questions - where? when? - but in the end he gives up when all he gets is silence and and Bill closes him out of the bathroom with an expression that begs him to try and understand.

His hotel room greets him with stale air when he gets back to it, like a stranger's house stale with old cigarette smoke and dirty dishes a week old in the sink, and his feet crinkle over the stack of unread newspapers left just inside his door.

-

**The Third Sally**

The world spins and jolts and tumbles again, and he can barely process that the car isn't still flying through the air, because it had seemed to go on forever after that first impact had jammed his head hard against the driver's side window and stole everything from his mind but white light and sensation. He holds onto the wheel, feels the airbag push his fingers off of it as it explodes outward, but it's already deflating before the car actually hits the ground again, and then it seems to be flying and rolling at the same time, seconds playing themselves out with no regard to sequential order.

It can't be more than a minute, or maybe he hits his head hard enough to lose consciousness for a while, but when he comes to, everything still feels like it's in motion and he feels the stab of broken bones in his wrist, maybe his ribs, hears the rough idle of a truck engine, and the ominous ticking from the car, the falling of broken glass like every sound is magnified. 

_Everything_ hurts, and that's all he can focus on for a minute before he remembers the voice on the phone, hears shifting - he checks on Carter first - moving, alive. The man in the suit is faring better, and his mind drags up a voice, a warning in his ear just before events become a blur of motion and reaction - 

_I'm the partner of the man in your back seat_

-and he can _almost_ see the picture, here, sketched out in Carter's actions, in the man in the suit's actions, in Bill's warnings, and there's the sound of heels on pavement, but this is important. His legs are pinned, twisted, held under the crush of seats and twisted car interior, but his mind isn't. 'Don't you think there's a reason?'

He must have hit his head pretty hard, his vision is going round and round like the car's still spinning, and when he lays back, lets his head rest on the ground, he can almost picture himself laying back in Bill's apartment, on the bed, the warm weight of the cat settling on his chest.

_They know something I don't, they all did,_ he thinks, and for a moment the thought is bitter, it tastes like lead in his mouth.

His giant was a windmill: an inn is just an inn, not a castle.   
-

**Author's Note:**

> -My season 1 memory is a bit fuzzy. My season 2 memory is slightly fuzzy. I tried to research what episodes this would go around, and then said fuck it. This may bend or stretch the POI timeline a little, I'm sorry i'm not sorry. idontcare.gif.  
> -About a billion references are made to Don Quixote, which I've never actually read. The outline seemed to remind me a little of Donnelly's storyline though so I rolled with it. The title, 'Rocinante' is the name of Quixote's horse, which I believe is a pun on 'Rocin' which means 'a work horse' - much like someone we know, and 'Ante' which means 'to go before' - and as a suffix can mean 'functioning as'. 'Being a work horse', roughly.  
> -Szymanski's cat is homage to the first Donnelly/Szymanski fic I read, 'Duty Calls', by kmmerc who I adore. It's name is Calvin, IIRC, which in this case is probably homage to to the author Calvin Trillin instead of Calvin and Hobbes.  
> -'Dry: A Memoir' by Augusten Burroughs.  
> -This was supposed to only be a 3 sentence fic which it failed to be but I succeeded in making it a 'less than 3 chapters fic'?  
> -Three sentence version: When Szymanski feeds him, Donnelly chews food and radiates gloom. They don't always have angry sex, but when they do it's pretty hot. Bill tries to prepare him for the fact that he may have to learn to trust people a different way, but maybe Donnelly will only see that when it's too late.  
> -For an authentic 'what the shit was the writer listening to while they wrote this' experience, go on endless youtube and shove in 'Sweet Nothing' by Calvin Harris and listen to it about fifty seven times.


End file.
